tiple times. Then there’s Brian Eha’s Walking the
Silk Road (Portfolio, summer 2015), a nonfiction
work about the Silk Road, the underground website for illegal drugs; the agency said the book “
endeavors to tell the Silk Road’s entire evolution and
demise.” Eha has frequently covered the online
currency Bitcoin and has written for, among others,
the Atlantic and Outside magazines. Another big
book for Foundry is How to Catch a Russian Spy by
Anonymous, with Ellis Henican (Scribner,
2015). The book, which was preempted in the
U.K. (and, at press time, had offers from houses in
Italy and Germany), is based on an actual story
from the Cold War era, in which an average Joe
became a double agent for the U.S., ultimately uncovering a Russian spy. The anonymous author,
who is working with investigative journalist Henican, will, Foundry said, “reveal his true identity
during the writing of the book.” The work has also
been optioned for film in a major deal, with 20th
Century Fox acquiring the rights for seven figures
shortly after the book was bought by Scribner.
Then, from HarperCollins’s newly named imprint,
Dey Street, is Wendy Suzuki’s currently untitled
work about her own transformation from, as
Foundry put it, “fat, frumpy and forgetful to foxy
and focused.” Suzuki has a Ph.D. and is an authority on the subject of brain plasticity.

Janklow & Nesbit

The big nonfiction book from J&N is Jimmy Cart-er’s A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence andPower (Simon & Schuster, Mar.), which the agencydescribed as, “an informed and passionate chargeabout a devastating effect on economic prosperityand unconscionable human suffering that affects usall.” Another big book for J&N is Chrysler Szar-lan’s debut novel The Hawley Book of the Dead (Bal-lantine, Sept.), which is full of “suspense, passionand magic in the exquisitely imagined tradition ofA Discovery of Witches”; rights sold in the U.K., theNetherlands, and Brazil. From Josh Weil is TheGreat Glass Sea (Grove Atlantic, July), a debutnovel from the author of a celebrated novella col-lection (The New Valley), about Russian twin broth-ers who labor side by side for the same company—the world’s largest greenhouse—until one beginsto ascend professionally and the other “slides intoa life of bare subsistence.” The highly anticipatednew one from Anne Rice, Prince Lestat (Knopf,Oct.), which features the return of the titular vam-pire, is also on J&L’s list; it is the sequel to Rice’s1988 novel, Queen of the Damned (also published byKnopf). And from M.A. Larson is Pennyroyal’s Academy(Putnam, fall), the first title in a debut middle-gradeseries set at a prestigious boarding school that “shapeslittle girls into warrior princesses.”

DeFiore & Company

One of the titles D&C will be pushing in the rights
tent this year is Diamond Head (Harper, spring 2015),
a debut novel from Cecily Wong, a 26-year-old Barnard graduate. The agency described the book as “a
sweeping multigenerational saga” that unfolds the
story behind a legendary Chinese-Hawaiian shipping
family”; rights sold in Germany. Another big book for
the shingle is the new one from the author of the bestselling photo book Humans of New York, Brandon
Stanton:Little Humans (FSG, Oct.), which is a picture
book version of the author’s debut, featuring shots of
children. From Rick Yancey is The Infinite Sea (
Putnam, Sept.), the second book in his bestselling 5th
Wave series; rights sold in multiple countries. Then
there’s Keith Houston’s The Book: A Cover-to- Cover
Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (
Norton, fall 2015), which the agency called “an exploration
of the long and surprising history of this most important of information technologies... the book.” Another
nonfiction work is award-winning science journalist
Peter Brannen’s The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes,
Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses (Ecco,
2016), which examines “deep time and Earth’s past
dead-ends.”

William Morris Endeavor

A big WME book this year is Pamela Druckerman’s

There Are No Grownups: And Other Things It Took Me40 Years to Learn (Penguin Press, no pub date yet), thenew one from the author of the 2012 bestseller Bring-ing Up Bébé. No Grownups was inspired by a recent NewYork Times article in which the author touched onhitting the milestone year. From Dr. Meg Jay—sheis a UVA professor, child psychologist and TED talk–giver--is Supernormal (Hachette/Twelve, no pub dateyet), which WME said will “illuminate the secretworld of the heroic child.” Scottish writer KristyLogan has Gracekeepers (on submission in the U.S.,rights sold in the U.K.), which is about two women—one who buries the dead deep in the ocean and theother who works in the circus. The fantasy novel is set“in a world divided between those inhabiting themainland and those inhabiting the sea.” Another no-table novel from WME is Meg Wolitzer’s Belzhar(Dutton, Sept.), about a New Jersey teenager whoseBritish boyfriend has died and who is now at a “ther-apeutic boarding school” in Vermont; WME said the Rick YanceyJimmy CarterJosh WeilM. A. LarsonCecily Wong